Monday, 13 April 2015

DAIRY FREE ZONE

We had lunch with a friend
this weekend that has a severe food allergy. Not the “I’m allergic to gluten
cause I fear carbs and can’t fit into my skirt, but then I inhale a loaf of
bread hiding in the closet” type of allergy; but the kind where you actually carry
an epi pen to save your freaking life. Hay fever is the extent of my allergies, so I’ve
never had to deal with life and death situations when it comes to food
(although once a month if I don’t get chocolate, someone will die).

Of course, as I do, I asked
him a million questions about what it was like being allergic to dairy of all
kinds (I’m sure he never tires of answering if he misses ice cream; we dairy
folk are such sadists) and he agreeably took it in stride. By the time I hit the questions about colds and if he produces less snot than the rest of us and if someone kisses him with
butter on their lips, would it send him into anaphylactic shock (yes, he had
this happen, but the reaction was mild; of course, I had already written a film
scene in my head and was giddy with the filmic possibilities), my husband gave me the look of 'OK, you're getting boring now.'

At the time we were eating at
a Lebanese restaurant and when it came to ordering he casually looked at the
waitress and told her he had an allergy to dairy. (If it were me, I’d carry
printed memos in black bold print and a bullhorn, but that's me). On first blush, I swear I detected an eye roll on her
part, which from where I sat was a tad worrisome. She then uttered back in a thick
accent, ‘oh you mean gluten.’ Um, NO, I mean DAIRY and we’re talking about this
man’s life here, so you better down an espresso, get a pen, and snap to attention.

This was when I thought to
myself that dealing with the general fray when you have a life-threatening
allergy must be a tedious reminder that you cannot trust anyone, especially the
general public that can barely find Afghanistan on a map, let alone spell it – (that’s goat
country, lots of dairy there I’m thinkin)… Yes, I’m jaded as h*ll, but
I’ve had tellers at the bank that can’t even add, but that certainly doesn’t
put my life on the line.

After we set her straight on
the differences between gluten and dairy she started to take him seriously as
to what could NOT be in his food. Of course, I kept uttering from my side of
the table, ‘he’s serious, he could DIE’ just so she fully understood the
repercussions (the kicker, he didn’t even have his epi pen on him, so I sat at
the table debating how fast I could run to his flat in sandals if he fell over
into his ‘dairy’ free meal).To her
credit, she then committed fully to the cause and even brought him special
bread with his hummus that the cook made with oil instead of butter. Tip for you, lady.

I credit this friend of ours
for being so calm about his allergy, then again, he’s lived with it his whole
life, he’s probably very used to what he can and can’t do and the idiots he
encounters in restaurants that think double cream is a vegetable. If it were
me, I’d probably never leave the house to eat, would have forced my mom to home
school me and would bring my own food to dinner parties (those pesky trust
issues again). But again, I tend to go a bit overboard at times in the precaution department.

And of course what did we do
after lunch just to emphasize what good friends we were? We dragged him to ice
cream of course and ate it in front of him. Such sadists we are.